


Cover Me

by geekwriter143 (Sena)



Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-29
Updated: 2011-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-26 16:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/285370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sena/pseuds/geekwriter143
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warrick's glad he has someone to watch his back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cover Me

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2004.

I could feel it inside me, feel it pulsing and alive. It was there in my blood, the need so great, the ache of it filling me. And the voice, that damn little voice whispering, Just this once, man. It's a sure thing. It's not gambling if it's a sure thing.

Vikings versus Packers, man, and I knew it, could feel it in my gut that the Packers would take them with at least a 14 point spread.

It would be so easy, so quick. Just drive up, place my bet, drive away. I was off duty, and it was a sure thing, after all.

Monkey on my back? Oh, hell yeah. Monkey fucking jumping up and down on my shoulders and dry humping my skull.

I was sitting in my car, across the street, watching the slow line of cars as they pulled up to the window. Drive-through gambling, man. There's no town like Vegas.

I reached for the glove compartment. I kept a few bills stashed in the owner's manual for emergencies. They'd been there a long time, and I never took them out because I told myself I'd never use them.

That's the kind of shit you tell yourself when the monkey's sleeping. That's the kind of shit you believe when that monkey's sleeping it off after dry humping you near to death.

It starts off sexy, you know? You're Dean Martin or Sammy D, strutting around the casino and dropping big cash. You can do that shit when you don't have anyone to take care of but yourself. You can spend your money any way you want, and if what you want is to be a player, well, you don't need no Frank Sinatra for that. All you need is cash money, baby, and you're a celebrity.

I hustled a little in high school. Nothing big time, just a few college poker nights. Rich UNLV frat boys who thought they were being charitable by inviting the poor Negro from the ghetto into their world for the night. They didn't count on the poor Negro being me.

And who am I? I'm Warrick Brown, baby, and when it comes to cards nobody can beat me. Those frat boys, they thought poker was about attitude, about smoking fat cigars and calling each other's bluff. They didn't know what I knew, that poker isn't gambling. Poker's skill, poker's science. Part statistics, part strategy, part psychology. They should have known better than to invite me—the poor kid from the ghetto, working his ass off, taking night classes on scholarship on top of his high school AP load. They thought they were being charitable, inviting me to play. They thought they'd give the poor science geek a night off, give him a break.

They didn't know what I know. Never invite a science geek to play if you don't want him to play to win. It's what we do. We assess the situation, we read the evidence, and we go from there. It's not about ego and macho posturing, it's about skill.

Honestly, who would you want to play against in a poker game? Some half-drunk frat boy or a kid from the ghetto who can do differential equations in his head? I'll put my money 20 to 1 on the kid, and if you bet on the frat boy I'll make it double or nothing cuz you're a sucker.

I was a runner for a while, placing other men's bets, and I made good money, sometimes 2k a week. When you're 19, 2 grand a week is paradise. Hell, I'd think I was in paradise if I made 2 grand a week now. I barely make 2 grand a month. Don't ever let anyone tell you that working for the government is where the money's at.

In college I found my calling. Blackjack. Two beautiful syllables, so simple, so pure. Blackjack is math, straight up. Blackjack is nothing but numbers, and I can do numbers. When it comes to counting cards the only person better than me is Rainman.

It starts sexy. It starts cool. You're the king, the master of the tables. You own those tables and you know you're important because the casinos comp you everything you could ever want. Free dinners, free champagne, free rooms. You wanna impress a girl, you take her to dinner at a restaurant where everybody knows your name, where the manager comes over like a close, personal friend to make sure everything's to your satisfaction, where, when you ask for the check, the waiter tells you, "It's already been taken care of, Mr. Brown. It's on the house, sir."

Yeah, that's right. Mr. Brown. Twenty-one years old and some forty year-old white dude is calling you sir. The girls weren't the only ones to be seduced. I was seduced, too, couldn't see that monkey on my back until it was skullfucking me, and even then I tried to pretend it wasn't there. Because I was the king. I was important. I was a high-roller, baby. Can't nobody beat Warrick Brown, not even the house.

But then that monkey takes over and instead of being the king, you're that monkey's little bitch. It starts slow. You don't even notice it. You don't see all the money you're losing, don't see the desperation in your every movement, don't see the hunger in your eyes. Your stomach curls in knots as you listen to the results of every football game, every basketball game, every baseball game. You're anxious for weeks before every prizefight. You play the whole blackjack table at once and when you loose 50 grand in one night you shrug it off. You tell yourself you'll win it back tomorrow. You down a few complimentary drinks and instead of going home to sleep you head back to the table, barely making it to work before your shift starts.

You think you're special. You think you can beat the house. If you just keep going, if you just keep betting, you're going to be rolling in it. The casinos know you think this way. That's why they ply you with free food, free drinks, free penthouse suites. It's not free. Those three drinks you had actually cost you 50 grand, but that monkey's gripping your hair so tight and fucking your head so hard that you can't see it.

You can't see anything until something happens to make you see. Until your life revolves around gambling. Until you loose it all—until you lose a girl's life for her.

You're on duty. You know you should stay with her. She's a rookie, she needs supervision. You've been doing this for years. You know protocol. But you need to place a bet, have to hurry, have to give that monkey what he wants. And because of you a girl dies.

I'd seen a lot of death in my life. I saw it every day, saw people wracked with guilt and shame and pain. It had never touched me, really. You learn how to keep it from taking hold of you. You learn how to let it go because if you don't you'll go crazy. It never touched me before, but then again it had never been my fault before.

So I'm sitting there in the parking lot, across the street from what is either my salvation or my own personal hell, and I've got $500 in the glove compartment that I can place on the Packers, and I know I'll win. So why don't I put the car in drive and get in line to place my bet? Because that monkey's already killed once person, and I'm terrified that if I give in, he'll kill again.

I picked up my cell and started to dial Grissom's number, but then hung up. He wasn't the heart-to-heart type, no matter how much faith he had in me. Catherine would be better. Catherine would be perfect. She knew what it was like to have an addiction you had to feed, knew what it was like to have that monkey on your back. She was no saint, which made her listen and love like an angel. But it was 3 in the afternoon, and if she wasn't asleep she was with her kid, and Lord knows she didn't need to add my personal shit to her pile of troubles.

I barely knew Sara, but I knew her well enough to know she wouldn't get it. She'd try to help, but weakness in others made her angry, and I didn't want to deal with her personal shit.

So I called Nick. The phone rang four times, the answering machine picked up, and I was about to hang up when I heard his voice, groggy and thick with sleep. "Stokes," he said. He cleared his throat. "Stokes," he said again, this time more clearly.

"I woke you up," I said. As an afterthought I added, "It's Warrick."

"I know. I've got caller ID. What's up?" I heard him fumbling with the phone. "Massive pileup on I-15? Plane crash? Oh, shit, it's not a school shooting, is it? Please don't tell me it's a school shooting."

"What?"

"Well, it's got to be huge if day shift's calling us in," he said. "If it's a school shooting, just tell me. My scanner needs new batteries or I'd have it on by now."

"It's not work, Nick. It's me. Look, I woke you up. I'm sorry. Forget it, man. Go back to sleep."

I flipped my phone shut and laid my head back against the seat. I closed my eyes. I was tired. I knew I should go home and sleep. My phone rang and I sighed and flipped it open. "Warrick."

"Not to pry or anything," Nick's twang was stronger than usual, most likely because he wasn't fully awake, "but is something wrong?"

"Go back to sleep, Nick, I'm fine."

"You wouldn't be calling me at this time of night—day—if everything was fine. Are you at a casino?"

It cut me to the core how close he was. I thought I'd been hiding it so well, keeping it so under control that no one could see how close I was to breaking.

"No," I said. "Not a casino. A betting booth. Across the street from it, actually."

"Where?" he asked.

When I told him, he said, "I'll be there in 15."

It wasn't what I expected. I wasn't sure what I expected, but I definitely hadn't expected Nick to give up hours of sleep to babysit me. Sometimes I think in our line of work, sleep's the most precious commodity. I'd maybe expected a 10 minute talk-down, 20 minutes at the most, him telling me I'd come too far to give it all up, that I was better than that, that I'd loose way more than money if I bet, no matter what the outcome of the game. I didn't expect him to stage a one-man intervention.

It only took him 9 minutes to get there. He parked next to me, rolled his passenger side window down. I rolled my window down and as I did he leaned towards the open window and said, "Man, have I ever got a craving for Mexican and beer. You know where Dos Pesos is?"

I smirked. "You're talking to a Vegas native, boy. Of course I know where it is."

"Good. Let's roll."

That was it. He rolled his window back up and backed out of the parking space. It took me a few seconds before I got enough presence of mind to follow him. No platitudes, not a word about why I was sitting in my car in a parking lot, sweating like a junkie even though the air was on full blast. Nothing in his eyes, either, no guilt or blame. As I followed him to the restaurant, I realized that was why I called him. It's not Nick's style to talk about things. He just acknowledges and moves on. He was a distraction, not a lecture or recrimination, and that was exactly what I needed that day.

We ate damn good Mexican food, drank a few beers. We shot the shit, as he would say. We talked about work, about women, but not about gambling and not about sports. I knew he was doing it on purpose. Nick loved sports, could talk the details of the game better than any color man, but he didn't mention it that day because he knew. We were talking around one of our favorite topics, not daring to touch it because of that monkey, but it was an easy omission. There was no awkwardness, no starts and stops to the conversation. Nick's face said it all. I needed help, he was there for me, that was all. It was no big deal and definitely not anything we needed to talk about.

Towards the end of the meal, when Nick was finishing up the last of the sopapillas, I said, "Look, Nick, I really—"

"I know," he said, cutting me off before I could finish my thought.

"Thank you," I said.

He shrugged and ducked his head down, an aw-shucks expression on his face as his cheeks colored slightly. "It's nothing," he said softly.

I didn't want the silence to turn into tension, so I said, "One of these days your metabolism is going to slow down, and if you keep eating like you did today, you're gonna end up fatter than Shamu and Pavarotti's love child."

He laughed at that. "Sopapillas, man," he said as he drizzled the last bit of sweet, fried bread with honey. "This is the only place in town that makes 'em even close to the way Lupe, our housekeeper, made 'em."

I smiled. Bitch had a maid growing up. With anybody else the comment, and the offhanded way he said it, would have rankled me. But not Nick. There was no undercurrent to the comment; he hadn't meant to brag, hadn't meant to let me know that he was somehow superior to me because of his family's financial situation. He was just being honest, just telling me he'd had a maid named Lupe who made great sopapillas.

He might have been a rich frat boy once upon a time, but I knew if he'd been one of the rich frat boys I'd played poker against all those years ago, I wouldn't have won nearly as much as I did.


End file.
